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SAN FRANCISCO: Computer security experts are studying a scary new cyber weapon: a software smart bomb that may have been crafted to find and sabotage a nuclear facility in Iran. Malicious software, or malware, dubbed "Stuxnet" is able to recognise a specific facility's control network and then destroy it, according to German computer security researcher Ralph Langner. "Welcome to cyber war," Langner said in a post at his website. "This is sabotage." Langner has been analyzing Stuxnet since it was discovered in June and said the code had a technology fingerprint of the control system it was seeking and would...

"A computer virus dubbed the world's "first cyber superweapon" by experts and which may have been designed to attack Iran's nuclear facilities has found a new target -- China. The Stuxnet computer worm has wreaked havoc in China, infecting millions of computers around the country, state media reported this week..."

(Sept. 30) -- The intrigue surrounding the mysterious, highly sophisticated computer worm Stuxnet got a little more Dan Brownish today with the revelation that there may be hidden messages embedded in the malware's code. The New York Times reported this morning that one of the files in the worm was called "Myrtus," which may be a reference to the Old Testament Book of Esther, in which Jews thwart a Persian plot against them. Along with mysterious Myrtus were two numbers that might be additional clues to who is behind the worm. Or, as the Times points out, they could mean...

Deep inside the computer worm that some specialists suspect is aimed at slowing Iran’s race for a nuclear weapon lies what could be a fleeting reference to the Book of Esther, the Old Testament tale in which the Jews pre-empt a Persian plot to destroy them. That use of the word “Myrtus” — which can be read as an allusion to Esther — to name a file inside the code is one of several murky clues that have emerged as computer experts try to trace the origin and purpose of the rogue Stuxnet program, which seeks out a specific kind...

Iran is going nuclear over a malicious computer worm targeting the country's atomic energy facilities. The Stuxnet worm has targeted not only Iran's Bushehr nuclear plant -- scheduled to go online in a matter of weeks -- but also the personal computers of the government's nuclear officials, the country's national news agency reports. Iran has not yet publically pointed blame to the West, but several Internet security experts publicly stated that they suspect that a hostile government such as the U.S. or Israel may be behind the cyberattack. "This would not be easy for a normal group to put together,"...

It's Nothing, Like An Upset StomachTehran, Iran: A computer worm has seized control of Iran's first nuclear power station, just weeks before the facility was ready to go online; possibly explaining Netanyahu's reluctance to bomb the facility. The Bushehr nuclear power plant's project manager, Mahmoud Jafari, said a team is trying to remove the worms from several infected computers, but those readers who are familiar with the problem know, without uninfected back-up the situation may be hopeless. Really talented hackers could also infect the components, making any new computer hooked up to the system vulnerable immediately, imagination is the...

The world’s first cyber ‘super weapon’ may have been designed to attack a nuclear power station in Iran, experts believe. A computer virus called Stuxnet has been described as the most sophisticated 'worm' ever created and has already infected more than 45,000 networks worldwide. A 'worm' is a type of computer virus that can reproduce by sending copies of itself to any PC that is connected to the infected machine. Now internet security experts fear that Stuxnet, which was first detected in June, is the first 'worm' specifically created to target real-world infrastructure such as power stations and water plants....

There is little doubt that the fine gradations of history will give cyber war an earlier start. But just as television news was transformed by technology before the Iranian Revolution in 1979, and politics was transformed by social networking before it appeared that Twitter would bring about a second Iranian Revolution, process and progress need crystallizing events, where the political and cultural significance of technological innovation becomes indisputable. Such a moment came in July with the discovery of a worm known as Stuxnet, which sought out a particular version of the Siemens’ SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) systems that...

Looking at these photos makes me wonder how someone with such obvious character flaws ever became president. Plus he's a fly magnet.

A California man at odds with state regulators regarding whether his worm-waste products are pesticides is taking his fight to court. George Hahn of Cardiff, who was fined $100,000 last year by the state Department of Pesticide Regulation for allegedly selling unregistered pesticides, claims in Sacramento Court his products are made from all-natural ingredients and should not have to be registered, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported Monday. Hahn said his products -- Worm Gold, Worm Gold Plus and Tree Rescue Solution, are made from worm feces, sometimes called castings -- are fertilizers that improve the soil and help plants grow....

More than a year after doomsday reports hinted that the Conficker worm would bring down the Internet, one-in-10 Windows PCs still have not been patched to plug the hole the worm wriggles through, new data shows. And 25 of every 1,000 systems are currently infected with the worm. According to Qualys, a security risk and compliance management provider, about 10% of the hundreds of thousands of Windows systems it monitors for customers have not yet applied Microsoft's MS08-067 security update. MS08-067, an out-of-band release that shipped in October 2008, patched a bug in the service Windows uses to connect to...

A new amphibian species can survive on land with no nostrils, lungs, or legs, say researchers who discovered the bizarre beast. The creature, found in Guyana, is part of the wormlike group of amphibians known as caecilians. Only one other caecilian species is known to live without lungs.

A "tremendous" amount of financial data has been stolen by a Trojan that has infected hundreds of thousands of corporate and personal PCs, according to information security specialist SecureWorks. Clampi, also known as Ligats, Ilomo or Rscan, has spread across Microsoft networks in a "worm-like fashion" and is "one of the largest and most professional thieving operations on the Internet" says Joe Stewart, director of malware research at SecureWorks' counter threat unit. Once it has infected a PC, the Trojan monitors Web sessions to see if one of 4500 targeted sites are visited. If a victim uses one of these...

SNIPPET: "UPDATE: The Koobface gang is upgrading the command and control infrastructure in response to the positive ROI out of the takedown activities." SNIPPET: "Related posts: Dissecting Koobface Worm's Twitter Campaign Dissecting the Koobface Worm's December Campaign Dissecting the Latest Koobface Facebook Campaign The Koobface Gang Mixing Social Engineering Vectors"

PCs Used in Korean DDoS Attacks May Self Destruct There are signs that the concerted cyber attacks targeting U.S. and Korean government and commercial Web sites this past week are beginning to wane. Yet, even if the assaults were to be completely blocked tomorrow, the attackers could still have one last, inglorious weapon in their arsenal: New evidence suggests that the malicious code responsible for spreading this attack includes instructions to overwrite the infected PC's hard drive. Update: This is already happening. Please be sure to read the updates at the end of this post. Original post: According to Joe...

MOSCOW, Idaho – The giant Palouse earthworm has taken on mythic qualities in this vast agricultural region that stretches from eastern Washington into the Idaho panhandle — its very name evoking the fictional sandworms from "Dune" or those vicious creatures from the movie "Tremors." The worm is said to secrete a lily-like smell when handled, spit at predators, and live in burrows 15 feet deep. There have been only a handful of sightings. But scientists hope to change that this summer with researchers scouring the Palouse region in hopes of finding more of the giant earthworms. Conservationists also want the...

ecurity sites are warning web users to beware fake Twitter invites in their email inboxes. The reports, based on an alert on Wednesday from Symantec, say the emailed invites come with a malicious attachment which, if downloaded, harvests email addresses from your computer and copies itself to removable drives and shared folders. The emails carry the subject line “Your friend invited you to twitter!”, while the sender’s address is spoofed as “invitations@twitter.com”. Unlike a typical Twitter invite, however, the email contains no invitation link: instead it carries the attached file Invitation Card.zip, tempting the receiver to download it. The attachment,...

Was downloading a video from the internet (Kung Fu movie) when my Avast anti-virus software first warned me of a trojan (from the find site) and then a worm. I deleted both. Both Avast and Trend Micro House Call show no infection. However, on my Facebook account, something sent an ugly message with an even uglier link (which also warned on a virus) to everyone on my Facebook. I do not automatically log in to Facebook, I put in my password every time. How did it do that?

In a recent blog post, the Cyber Secure Institute claims that based on their previous studies into the average cost of such malware attacks, the economic loss due to the Conficker worm could be as high as $9.1 billion. Despite that their analysis also considered a much limited infection rate (200,000 infected hosts), they claim that the cost of the virus in this case is still around $200 million. The research excludes an important fact though - not only is Conficker still active and infecting, but also, according to the most recent infection rate estimate courtesy of the Conficker Working...

BOSTON (Reuters) - A malicious software program known as Conficker that many feared would wreak havoc on April 1 is slowly being activated, weeks after being dismissed as a false alarm, security experts said. Conficker, also known as Downadup or Kido, is quietly turning thousands of personal computers into servers of e-mail spam and installing spyware, they said. The worm started spreading late last year, infecting millions of computers and turning them into "slaves" that respond to commands sent from a remote server that effectively controls an army of computers known as a botnet. Its unidentified creators started using those...